Climate Change in Chinese Newspapers 2000–2020: Discursive Strategies of Consolidating Hegemony

Abstract

Since China’s environmental policy is defined as top-down “authoritarian environmentalism”, political propaganda and media censorship heavily affect the communication of climate change. Hence, conducting an investigation of climate change communication in the context of China is a valuable exercise. This article uses Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to investigate how the Chinese Press reported on, and discursively constructed climate change through the employment of a series of discursive strategies, over a 20-year period, 2000-2020. The findings indicate that news reporting on climate change was in consistent alignment with the ruling Communist Party’s environmental policies during these two decades, facilitating the consolidation of the government’s hegemony.